Kaya wears a new skin

The organised beauty salon services market in India is still an emerging one. Lakme (for women only) seems to be the only one to stand out in this segment, while most others provide multiple services along with their salon business. Kaya has established itself as a leading skin pampering company in the country in its 9 years of existence, despite the business having yet to break even. The brand itself has undergone a skin treatment and now wears a new skin in a bid to show itself in a new light.

Official Speak: According to Suvodeep Das, Marketing Head, Kaya Skin Clinic, “the brand is much more than just a problem-solver, it offers the consumer complete beauty transformations. This repositioning exercise is not just about communicating a change in brand identity. There is a new portfolio of services, new service design within the clinics, and a new retail identity at the clinics that is being launched. The new look of Kaya is young and fresh.”

Harish Mariwala owned Marico started Kaya in 2002 with a single clinic in Bandra. Today it boasts of more than 6 lakh customers and more than 100+ completely owned clinics in India and abroad. The company also has its own product range (mostly sold in-house) along with its services offering.

The new visual identity is designed by Salt Brand Solutions while Eureka Moment has created the new retail identity. The new identity chooses to stay in the same type-based logo family as its predecessor, though much bolder and suitably tweaked at different points. The positioning has been set in a new typeface giving it the focus it deserves. The overall look is still clean, but the stem of ‘y’ separating ‘skin’ and ‘clinic’ is particularly disturbing to the eye.

The old identity was completely focused on skin, in color and in positioning, clearly showcasing kaya as a skin expert for skin problems, and not a beauty enhancement salon. The new identity tries to get the company into the beauty salon loop. “skin” & “ clinic” which had equal weights as ‘kaya’ earlier have now been shrunk to dangerously low sizes (in proportion), to shed the old perception. The color has been changed from skin to burgundy – akin to makeup you might say, like applying a deep cosmetic shade to naturally beautiful lips. The visual transformation has been from healthy beautiful skin to trendy made-up look, so to speak. The positioning has undergone a severe transformation too, from being clearly for the skin to a generic beauty services salon. Perhaps, skin was too restricting a business model.

A very interesting fallout of this change will be on the product packaging and the retail look. The classy minimalistic look will have to make way for a bolder, louder look.

So let’s wait and see if the change for Kaya is merely skin deep or emanating from the beauty deep inside.